So... so what?

The artful consideration of the universe, the recording and arranging of ones findings in order to confront a formal issue, is enough. But beyond that, there is so much more. Just as science tackles the Big Questions by way of smaller questions, so does art. A simple quest to see what happens when this color and that are placed next to each other, or when this particular formal constriction is placed upon a way of looking at the world, can lead to such profundity. So what? The only real response I can think of is ‘What else is there?’ If not this, then what? What would the world be, were there not minds attempting to make sense of it? What would my world be if I were not trying to make sense of it? So what? So what? Why not? So it isn’t for you, perhaps. But it does not negate the artist’s experience of having created it, nor does it eliminate the things you perhaps gained in perceiving it. Things that may or may not be readily apparent, but things that are nonetheless present.

think

so very delicate, so fragile, this white light we all are given. so easy to obscure it, to deny it, so easily snuffed out. how much harder it is, to let it show through. how much more difficult, to burn ourselves upon it, to be consumed in its rapturous brilliance. and how hard to make it shine once more, once it is dimmed and hidden away. so many moths beating their heavy wings in desperate pleading to regain admittance to that glow, so many men staring into the sun to find that which is so long lost.

temporal nature of being

i have passed too much of my life before a screen. too much of my life before a screen from which nothing but emptiness can be taken. i am changing this. i am only using the screen for somethingness, now.

airport

there are small birds living in the airport. flitting about the airy ceiling and living on scraps from the food court.

softly

six light brown feathers with dark brown banding were stuck, in a dried smear of rust colored blood, to the cold glass of the front window as i arrived home this morning. i blew on them gently and they floated away on my fogged breath and my chest felt warm in spite of the frigid air.

confuse

his voice is in a tonal range so low that you can barely register it, and he speaks quickly and you race to keep up and resort to reading his lips at times. his eyes gleam when he is excited and he carves small arcs in the air with his fingertips as he speaks, and you follow his fingers instead of his lips and lose track of his words for a moment but somehow they have lost importance because everything he wishes to say is hidden in those small movements. he speaks without speaking, even as words tumble forth, and your body responds without the consent of your brain which is still embroiled deep in the verbal and won't be catching up for some time.

inevitable

let me tell you a secret, he says, those hard blue eyes dancing black in yellow streetlights and cold. let me tell you a secret. his all-too-familiar lips part over all-too-familiar teeth and his all-too-familiar tongue darts in and out quickly to calm his winter chap.
let me tell you a secret, he says, stepping closer, and his heat radiates from his dense form in the frozen stillness and the longing to be caught up in those arms and caressed by those hands is a forcible thing, a sick snaking sneaking creature climbing up your throat and squeezing the air from your lungs. let me tell you a secret, and he barks a short laugh and his breath grazes your cheek and you smile uncertain and unwilling to let him in again but incapable of preventing it.
let me tell you a secret, he says, and he leans in to whisper in your ear and you flinch but he doesn't notice. his lips brush your earlobe as he murmurs something you cannot decipher because your heart beats so loudly, echoing in your chest, that it drowns out anything else. what, you say, i didn't hear you, you were too quiet. and he barks out a laugh once more and throws his head toward the sky, at where the moon would be if it weren't hiding behind thick clouds and snow, looking for all the world like a coyote, and perhaps he is, and without looking down he barks yet again and bays 'i love you' to the clouds and then he looks at you and grins, feral in the darkness, and runs his hands through his hair.

temporary

i will create a new version of the january sky, when it comes.

it will not care that i am hiding beneath it.